China's new leader Xi Jinping said Saturday his first foreign trip as president to Russia had exceeded his expectations and hailed the strong partnership between the two countries after signing numerous energy deals.

"I can say that from my point of view, my visit has already achieved its aim and the results have already far exceeded my expectations," Xi told Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in comments translated into Russian and posted on the Russian government website.

The Pakistani Taliban on Saturday threatened to assassinate former military ruler Pervez Musharraf when he returns to the country to contest elections after nearly five years in self-imposed exile.

The 69-year-old escaped three assassination attempts when in office from 1999 to 2008, a target of Islamist extremists because of his alliance in the U.S.-led "war on terror" and attempts to clamp down on militants.

Australian Warren Rodwell emerged Saturday withered from 15 months as a captive of Islamic militants in the lawless southern Philippines, his ribs protruding but able to smile.

Rodwell, a former soldier, 54, joked with policemen and a journalist who took exclusive video footage of him for AFP at Pagadian city police station on Mindanao island, shortly after his pre-dawn release.

Thai rescue workers picked through the ashes of hundreds of shelters for Myanmar refugees Saturday after a ferocious blaze swept through a camp in northern Thailand killing 35 people.

Around 100 people were injured in Friday's fire at the Mae Surin camp in Mae Hong Son province, provincial governor Narumol Paravat told AFP by telephone, giving a reduced toll from the 45 dead previously stated.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has inspected a feared special forces unit, ordering them to strike at "lightening speed" once war breaks out, state media reported Saturday.

The inspection comes at a time of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, with multiple threats from the North of an armed response to joint South Korea-U.S. military drills and to U.N. sanctions imposed after its nuclear test last month.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that Iran's leader should spend more time working to improve the lot of his people than firing off warnings that he will annihilate Israeli cities.

Obama, in Jordan on the latest stop of a Middle East tour, sought to avoid getting into a war of words with Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but said Iran could transform its future if it stood down its nuclear program.